Those of you who have read earlier blog posts of mine, will know that as a child I was very shy.
Even now, as an adult, I still think of myself as being shy and reserved.
I’ve just put a lot of effort into overcoming this and by repeated practice I now find it manageable to speak in front of people and do the things that I used to find really difficult.
One thing that as a teenager particularly, I wasn’t very good at, was trying something new and different.
I was always happy to try something that I felt a bit more comfortable with, that I’d seen other people have a go at, and succeed and had a good idea of how to go about achieving success in this area.
This all changed in my early twenties with the biggest decision of my life, when I decided not to pursue the engineering career that I’d qualified for at university, but instead become a professional wrestler.
This change in direction was quite something for me.
Needless to say, it shocked everyone I knew.
I remember sitting in a café in Meadowhall in Sheffield, with my mum who had come to visit, and telling her that I had been training for the last few months and that my first match was coming up in a few weeks.
She told me later that, when I said I had something to tell her, she was expecting me to say that I’d got someone pregnant 😉
She said, as many people said around that time, “That was the last thing I expected to hear.”
This isn’t just because, so few people decide to become professional wrestlers, but just because I wasn’t known for trying new and different things.
But it had been something that had been bouncing around my head for years and years.
As a child, I’d enjoyed watching wrestling with my Dad, I’d always thought that it might be something I’d enjoy doing but never really thought I could.
All through my teenage years, it was an idea that consumed me, but again, I’d never actually do anything about.
I remember many a drunken evening as a student thinking, ‘I need to do this,’ until finally on my 21st birthday I vowed that I would give it a go.
Trying something new and different and outrageous like this changed me a lot as a person.
When I started wrestling, I had no idea what to do.
I googled wrestling schools, found one in Sheffield, moved there, started training, started following my dream.
It was a heady and exciting time of constant change.
New matches in new towns against new people… approaching new promoters to try and get bookings.
It was a time filled with mistakes and errors but I was learning at a rapid rate what to do.
This experience definitely changed me and encouraged me to try more new things, other ideas that I’d had banging around in my head for a while.
A few years later, as I was putting together my plans to launch an eBay business and set up my own studio and various other ideas that had been going round my head, somebody close to me referred to it as ‘The latest of my hare brained schemes’.
This was quite a revelation to me.
10 years earlier, one of the last people you’d consider someone who’d came up with and carried out hare brained schemes.
A lot of the things I’ve tried haven’t worked out, but I never regret giving them a go nowadays.
You could argue that RISE is mine and Matt’s latest hare brained scheme – to invest our entire life savings, countless hours of energy into a completely new and unproven model is by some definition crazy.
A phrase I remember hearing when I was an Area Manager teaching new personal trainers is: ‘The best thing to do is the right thing… the next best thing to do is the wrong thing… the worst thing to do is nothing at all’.
I’ve found more and more as I get older, that just taking action is key, just getting started then correcting course when you’re on route will always get you to where you want to go to quicker, than spending hours, weeks, months and years overthinking things.
I find that it’s the same with a lot of people who come to us at Guaranteed Fitness.
They suffer from what is called ‘Paralysis by Analysis’.
They don’t feel a 100% confident that what they are doing is the best thing.
They want to know the very best exercises, the very best way to eat, the very best supplements, etc.
And whilst that is a great target to work towards, I often find that this ‘Paralysis by Analysis’ is causing them to take zero action.
So there’s something in your life that you want, whether it’s to get healthy and fit, lose weight, to make changes in your work life, personal relationships and family, then, as Nike said, ‘Just Do It’.
Start taking action.
You’ll make mistakes, but every mistake you make will get you closer to where you want to get to.
Every mistake is an opportunity to learn.
And just by getting going, by doing something, you will be getting closer to your overall goal.
So next time you are unsure what to do in a situation, remember – The best thing to do is the right thing. The next best thing to do is the wrong thing. The worst thing to do is nothing at all.
Much love,
Jon “Learn from my mistakes” Hall
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